S 471 
.C6 K5 

Copy ^ 




r. H. KING. 



FARMERS 



OF U 



'7?- 



FORTY CENTURIES 



OR 



PE RMANENT AGRICULTURE IN CHINA. 
KOREA AND JAPAN 

F.' k KING, D. Sc. 

Formerly Professor of Agricultural Physics in trie University of Wisconsin 

and 
Cliief of Division of Soil Management, U. S. Department of Agriculture 

Author of "The Soil"; "Irrigation and Drainage" ; "Physics of 

Agriculture" and "Ventilation for Dwellings, 

Rural Schools and Stables." 



Madison, Wis. 
MRS. F. H. KING 

1911 
All rigJits reserved 



^^% 

o^^ 



Copyright, iqii 
By Mrs. F. H. KING 



CI.A30321)0 



PREFACE 



By Dr. L. H. Bailey. 

We have not yet gathered up the experience of mankind 
in the tilling of the earth; yet the tilling of the earth is 
the bottom condition of civilization. If we are to assemble 
all the forces and agencies that make for the final conquest 
of the planet, we must assuredly know how it is that all 
the peoples in all the places have met the problem of pro- 
ducing their sustenance out of the soil. 

We have had few great agricultural travelers and few 
books that describe the real and significant rural conditions. 
Of natural history travel we have had very much ; and of 
accounts of sights and events perhaps we have had too 
many. There are, to be sure, famous books of study and 
travel in rural regions, and some of them, as Arthur 
Young's "Travels in France," have touched social and 
political history; but for the most part, authorship of 
agricultural travel is yet undeveloped. The spirit of 
scientific inquiry must now be taken into this field, and all 
earth-conquest must be compared and the results be given 
to the people that work. 

This was the point of view in which I read Professor 
King's manuscript. It is the writing of a well-trained 
obserA^er who went forth not to find diversion or to depict 
scenery and common wonders, but to study the actual con- 
ditions of life of agricultural peoples. We in North 
America are wont to think that we may instruct all the 
world in agriculture, because our agricultural wealth is 
great and our exports to less favored peoples have been 
heavy; but this wealth is great because our soil is fertile 



iv Preface. 

and new, and in large acreage for every person. We have 
really only begun to farm well. The first condi- 
tion of farming is to maintain fertility. This condition 
the oriental peoples have met, and they have solved it in 
their way. We may never adopt particular methods, but 
we can profit vastly by their experience. With the in- 
crease of personal wants in recent time, the newer countries 
may never reach such density of population as have Japan 
and China; but we must nevertheless learn the first lesson 
in the conservation of natural resources, which are the 
resources of the land. This is the message that Professor 
King brought home from the East. 

This book on agriculture should have good effect in 
establishing understanding between the West and the East. 
If there could be such an interchange of courtesies and in- 
quiries on these themes as is suggested by Professor King, 
as well as the interchange of athletics and diplomacy and 
commerce, the common productive people on both sides 
should gain much that they could use; and the results in 
amity should be incalculable. 

It is a misfortune that Professor King could not have 
lived to write the concluding "Message of China and Japan 
to the World.'' It would have been a careful and forceful 
summary of his study of eastern conditions. At the 
moment when the work was going to the printer, he was 
called suddenly to the endless journey and his travel here 
was left incomplete. But he bequeathed us a new piece 
of literature, to add to his standard writings on soils and 
on the applications of physics and devices to agriculture. 
Whatever he touched he illuminated. 

L. H, Bailey. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

IXTRODUCTIOX 1 

I. First Glimpses of Japan 14 

II. Grave Lands of China 48 

III. To Hongkong and Canton 60 

IV. Up the Si-kiang, West River 81 

v. E'c^tent of Canalization and Surface Fitting of 

Fields 97 

^ VI. Some Customs of the Common People 118 

VII. The FtT^L Problem, Building and Textile Mate- 
rials 137 

VIII. Tramps Afield 167 

IX. The Utilization of Waste 193 

X. In the Shantung Province 216 

XI. Orientals Crowd Both Time and Space 261 

>' XII. Rice Culture in the Orient 271 

XIII. Silk Clt>ture 311 

XIV. The Tea Industry 323 

XV. About Tientsin 330 

XVI. Manchuria and Korea 345 

XVII. Return to Japan 376 

y Message of China and Japan to the World. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



Portrait of Professor King Frontispiece 

No. Page 

1. Rainy weather costume 16 

2. tiirl on rainy-.iay wooden slioos 18 

3. Drying seaweed 20 

4. Growing seaweed 20 

5. Trellised pear orchard in winter 22 

6. Pear trees at Akar.hi Experiment Station. Japan 22 

7. Pears protected by paper bags 2y> 

8. Street in counti'y village. .Japan 24 

9. Crowded store 25 

10 Cliinese coimtry village along canal 2(\ 

LI. Japanese rice paddies 28 

] 2. Rice fields in Korea 29 

13. Rice fields in Yangtse delta. China 30 

14. Readjusted rice fields in Japan 32 

15. Rice in paddies, crops on the dikes 33 

16. Crowded peach orchard 34 

17. Cucumbers trellised, over greens 36 

18. Chinese farmer in winter dress 38 

19. Prince Ching 39 

20. Gardens crowded about buildings, Japan 41 

21. Vegetable vender, Japan 43 

22. Japanese vegetable market 44 

23. Terraced gardens at Nagasaki 46 

24. Graves in Yangtse delta, China 49 

25. Graves near Shanghai and Canton 51 

26. Graves on river bank and in garden 52 

27. C<raves in barley field -^-1 

28. Family group of graves 54 

29. Tempoi-ary buria! ^'l 

30. Graves decorated 56 

31. Group of grass-grown graves -J^ 

32. Wheelbarrow freighters in China o^ 

33 Sawing lumber in China 6-. 

34. nappy Valley 64 

35. Scene in florist's garden. Hongkong <»•] 

36. Garden in Happy Valley 66 

37. Receptacles for human waste «^ 

38. Water piped from mountain side to garden "J 

39. Terraced garden ^} 

40. Winter gardening ^2 

41 . Boat load of human wasi e ^^ 

42. Chinese foot-power ^-^ 

43. Mulberry neld fertilized with mud o4 

44. Fuel on the Sikiang ^^ 

45. Fields of i-ice and matting rush -^^ 

46. Fork shaped from limbs of tree ^-^ 

47. Landscape at Samshui. near Canton Ji 

48 Winter grown peas after rice »2 

49. . Fields flooded and fertilized for rice ^4 

50. Fields of ginger ^^ 

51. Map of canals in Chekiang province J8 

52 Map or: 2700 miles of canal lOO 



List of Illustrations. vii 

Page 

58. TNFap showing plains and Grand canal 102 

. 54. View across valley or rice fields 10''> 

55. Terraced and flooded rice fields 105 

56. Graded fields Ill 

57. (Traded fields 114 

58. Collecting- reservoir 115 

51). Compost pits beside path 116 

60. Trenched fields 117 

61. Shanghai cari\v?il 110 

62. Sewing circle 120 

68. Eating lunch 122 

64. Stone mill 123 

65. Laying warp 124 

66. Dye pits 125 

67. Whipping cotton 126 

68. Salted cabbage 129 

60. Chinese clover 1,31 

70. Vegetable market 13;> 

71. Lotus pond 1.38 

72. Charcoal halls 1.39 

78. Country woman in winter dress 141 

74. Boat loads of fuel 144 

75. Cotton stem luel 145 

76. Rice straw fuel 146 

77. Steaming tea leaves 147 

78. Dairy herd oi water buffalo ] 40 

70. Water buffalo and calf 150 

80. Pine bough fuel 151 

81. Houseboat on Chinese canal 158 

82. Forest cutting on hillsides 154 

88. Pine and oak bough fuel 15o 

84. Pine nursery 156 

85. Dried grass fuel 157 

86. Kaoliang fuel 158 

87. Fuel coming from the hills 160 

S8. Millet-thatch and mud plaster , 3 6] 

89. Air-dried earth brick 1.62 

90. House building , 163 

91. Brick kiln 164 

92. Fertilizing with canal mud 168 

98. Stairways used in carrying mud from canal 171 

94. Mulberry orchard 172 

95. Snail shells in canal mud 174 

96. Chinese incubators 178 

97. Boat load of egas 181 

98. Carrying compost 182 

99. Compost pit 188 

100. Compost pit and clover 184 

1 01. (^omnosting 3 85 

102. Building clover compost stack 186 

108. Dredging canal mud 187 

1 04. Compost stack 188 

1 05. Fitting for rice 191 

106. Manure boats in Shanghai 195 

107. Map of Shanghai region 196 

108. Japanese cart 1.97 

109. Receptacles for human wa'^te 199 

110. Storage pits for liquid manure 200 

111. Carrying pails for liquid manure 201 

112. Applyiug liquid manure with dipper 202 

1 13. Results 204 

114. Laborious green manuring. .Japan 208 

i 1 5. Returning from Genjia lands 210 

116. Chart issued by Nara Experiment Station, Japan 212 

117. Compost house.' Nai-a Experiment Station, Japan 213 



viii List of Illustrations. 

118. View in Keforeshition Tract, Tsingtao, China 218 

119. Reforestation, Tsingtao. Cliina 219 

120. Reforestation, Tsingtao, Cliina 220 

121. Wild yellow rose. Shantung, China 22] 

122. Shantung plow, China 225 

123. Irrigating outnt . . . . 227 

124. Soil erosion in Shantung 229 

125. Water-carrier 230 

320. Chinese farmyard 231 

127. Wheat in Shantung, China 237 

128 and 129. Vehicles of forty centuries 238 

130. Wheat in hills and rows 240 

131. Seed-drill 241 

J 32. Hoeing grain 243 

133. Plastered compost stack 244 

1 34. Home after the day's work 246 

135. Farm village street 249 

136. Stone mill 256 

1 37. Peanut cakes and paper demijohn 257 

138. Pulverized human excreta 258 

139. Fertilizing 259 

140. Foot-power pump and grain in beds 262 

141. Wheat in which cotton is planted 263 

142. Same field, wheat harvested 264 

143. Multiple crops 265 

144. Green manuring 206 

145. Multiple crops ia Chihli, China 267 

146. Cutting wheat roots 268 

147. Compost shelter and pig pen 269 

148. Suggested conservation 273 

149. Rice fields in .Japan 275 

1 50. Rice fields in r hina 276 

153. Terraced rice fields. .Japan 278 

152. Steep narrow valley with rice paddies 279 

153. Egg plants between rice paddies 281 

154. Watermelons between rice paddies 282 

155. Watermelons and taro 283 

156. Home of Mrs. Wu 284 

157. Pumping station 285 

158. IJumping plant 286 

159. Nurserv rice beds 287 

1 60. Harrow in plowed field 288 

161. Revolving wooden harrow 289 

162. Women pulling rice 290 

163. Transplanting rice in China 291 

164. Transplanting rice in rainy weather 293 

165. Transplanting rice in Japan 294 

166. Weeding rice 295 

167. Boat load of grass for green manure 296 

168. Applying chaff as fertilizer 297 

369. Irrigation with swinging basket 298 

170. Well sweep and water bucket for irrigation 299 

1 71. Chinese foot-power and chain pump 300 

172. Fields flooded for rice 301 

173. .Japanese irrigation foot-wheel 302 

3 74. Pump shelter on bank of canal, China 303 

175. Current water-wheel, China 303 

176. Harvesting rice in Japan 304 

3 77. Curing rice 305 

178. Winnowing rice in Japan 306 

1 79. Polishing rice 3Q7 

3 80. Sacking rice 308 

381. liOadJng rice for shipment 308 

182. Threshing barley 309 

183. Eating rice 310 



List of Illustrations. ix 

Page 

184. Preparing silkworm eggs for batctiing 312 

185. Feeding silkworms SV.i 

186. Tending silkworms 31 1 

187. Sorting cocoons 315 

188. Mulberry orchard 316 

189. Mulberry tree many times pruned 317 

1 90. Mulberry orchard partly pruned 318 

191. Mulbei'ry trees on embankment 320 

192. Tea garden 321 

193. Tea plantation on hillside 326 

194. Picking tea in .Japan 327 

195. Weighing fresh tea 328 

196. Salt stacks and windmills 333 

197. Salt evaporating basins 334 

198. Chinese windmill 335 

199. Village on the Pei ho 337 

200. Hoeing grain 339 

201. Chinese hoe 340 

202. Han-esting wheat 341 

203. Shipping soy beans from Manchuria 348 

204. Wild white rose 352 

205. Millet and beans 360 

206. Manchu lady 361 

207. "Swing day"' in Korea 364 

208. Group of Koreans 365 

209. Korean women 366 

210. Korean farm houses 367 

211. Korean rice fields 369 

212. Green manuring 370 

213 UJce ppddies in mountain valley 371 

214. Eroding hillside. Korea 372 

215. Swinging scoop for irrigation 373 

216. Green manuring 380 

217. Fukuoka Experiment Station 381 

218. Fukuoka Experiment Station 382 

219. Fukuoka Experimont Station 383 

220. Fukuoka Experiment Station 384 

221. Japanese plows 386 

222. Test rice plats at Fukuoka p]xperiment Station 387 

223. Public highway in .Japan 388 

224. Taking wood to market, .lapan 389 

225. Terraced valley in .Japan 390 

226. Group of houses among rice paddies 391 

227. F'ields of matting rush 393 

228. .Japanese girls playing flower cards 394 

229. Well furnished .Japanese room 394 

230. Fertilizing rice with old stubble 398 

231. Irrigating with foot-power water-wheel 399 

232. Beauty at home in .Japan 401 

233. Old cherry tree 402 

234. Admiring cherry blossoms 403 

235. P^ntrance to Iviyomizu temple. Kyoto 404 

236. Kiyomizu temple and wooded slope 406 

237. Seats in temple park 407 

238. Iris garden. .Japan 408 

239. Street flower vender, .Japan 409 

240. Field of indit'o, .Japan 411 

241. Water wheel in .Japan 412 

242. Shizuoka Experiment Station 416 

243 .Japanese ladies 418 

244. Landscapes in Tokyo plain . 420 

245. Straw mulching 421 

246. Soil study fleld. Imperial Agr. Experiment Station. Tokyo... 42.'{ 

247. Equipment for soil studies. Imperial Agr. Experiment Station, 

Tokyo 426 

248 Toil may not cease 431 



INTEODUCTION. 



A word of introduction is needed to place the reader at 
the best view point from which to consider what is said in 
the following pages regarding the agricultural practices 
and customs of China, Korea and Japan. It should be 
borne in mind that the great factors which today charac- 
terize, dominate and determine the agricultural and other 
industrial operations of western nations were physical im- 
possibilities to them one hundred years ago, and until then 
had been so to all people. 

It should be observed, too, that the United States as yet 
is a nation of but few people widely scattered over a broad 
virgin land with more than twenty acres to the support of 
every man, woman and child, while the people whose prac- 
tices are to be considered are toiling in fields tilled more 
than three thousand years and who have barely one acre 
per capita, more than one-half of which is uncultivable 
mountain land. 

Again, the great movement of cargoes of feeding stuffs 
and mineral fertilizers to western Europe and to the east- 
ern United States began less than a century ago and has 
never been possible as a means of maintaining soil fertility 
in China, Korea or Japan, nor can it be continued indefi- 
nitely in either Europe or America. These importations 
are for the time making tolerable the waste of plant food 
materials through our modern systems of sewage disposal 
and other faulty practices; but the Mongolian races have 
held all such wastes, both urban and rural, and many 
others which we ignore, sacred to agriculture, applying 
them to their fields. 



2 Introduction. 

We are to consider some of the practices of a virile race 
of some five hundred millions of people who have an unim- 
paired inheritance moving with the momentum acquired 
through four thousand years; a people morally and intel- 
lectually strong, mechanically capable, who are awakening 
to a utilization of all the possibilities which science and in- 
vention during recent years have brought to western na- 
tions; and a people who have long dearly loved peace but 
who can and will fight in self defense if compelled to do so. 

We had long desired to stand face to face with Chinese 
and Japanese farmers; to walk through their fields and to 
learn by seeing some of their methods, appliances and 
practices which centuries of stress and experience have led 
these oldest farmers in the world to adopt. We desired 
to learn how it is possible, after twenty and perhaps thirty 
or even forty centuries, for their soils to be made to pro- 
duce sufficiently for the maintenance of such dense popu- 
lations as are living now in these three countries. We 
have now had this opportunity and almost every day Ave 
were instructed, surprised and amazed at the conditions 
and practices which confronted us whichever way we 
turned; instructed in the ways and extent to which these 
nations for centuries have been and are conserving and 
utilizing their natural resources, surprised at the magni- 
tude of the returns they are getting from their fields, and 
amazed at the amount of efficient human labor cheerfully 
given for a daily wage of five cents and their food, or for 
fifteen cents, United States currency, without food. 

The three main islands of Japan in 1907 had a popu- 
lation of 46,977,003 maintained on 20,000 square miles of 
cultivated field. This is at the rate of more than three 
people to each acre, and of 2,349 to each square mile; and 
yet the total agricultural imports into Japan in 1907 ex- 
ceeded the agricultural exports by less than one dollar per 
capita. If the cultivated land of Holland is estimated at 
but one-third of her total area, the density of her popula- 
tion in 1905 was, on this basis, less than one-third that of 
Japan in her three main islands. At the same time Japan 



Density of Population. 3 

is feeding 69 horses and 56 cattle, nearly all laboring ani- 
mals, to each square mile of cultivated held, while we were 
feeding in 1900 but 30 horses and mules per same area, 
these being our laboring animals. 

As coarse food transformers Japan was maintaining 
16,500,000 domestic fowl, 825 per square mile, but only one 
for almost three of her people. "We were maintaining, in 
1900, 250,600,000 poultry, but only 387 per square mile of 
cultivated field and yet more than three for each person. 
Japan's coarse food transformers in the form of swine, 
goats and sheep aggregated but 13 to the square mile and 
provided but one of these units for each 180 of her people ; 
while in the United States in 1900 there were being main- 
tained, as transformers of grass and coarse grain into meat 
and milk, 95 cattle, 99 sheep and 72 swine per each square 
mile of improved farms. In this reckoning each of the 
cattle should be counted as the equivalent of perhaps five 
of the sheep and swine, for the transforming power of the 
dairy cow is high. On this basis we are maintaining at 
the rate of more than 646 of the Japanese units per square 
mile, and more than five of these to every man, woman and 
child, instead of one to every 180 of the population, as is 
the case in Japan. 

Correspondingly accurate statistics are not accessible for 
China but in the Shantung province we talked with a 
farmer having 12 in his family and who kept one donkey, 
one cow, both exclusively laboring animals, and two pigs 
on 2.5 acres of cultivated land where he grew wheat, millet, 
sweet potatoes and beans. Here is a density of popula- 
tion equal to 3,072 people, 256 donkeys, 256 cattle and 512 
swine per square mile. In another instance where the hold- 
ing was one and tAvo-thirds acres the farmer had 10 in his 
family and Avas maintaining one donkey and one pig, giv- 
ing to this farm land a maintenance capacity of 3,840 peo- 
ple, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs to the square mile, or 240 
people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs to one of our forty-acre 
farms which our farmers regard too small for a single 
family. The average of seven Chinese holdings which we 



4 Introduction. 

visited and where we obtained similar data indicates a 
maintenance capacity for those lands of 1,783 people, 212 
cattle or donkeys and 399 swine, — 1,995 consumers and 399 
rough food transformers per square mile of farm land. 
These statements for China represent strictly rural popu- 
lations. The rural population of the United States in 1900 
was placed at the rate of 61 per square mile of improved 
farm land and there were 30 horses and mules. In Japan 
the rural population had a density in 1907 of 1,922 per 
square mile, and of horses and cattle together 125. 

The population of the large island of Chungming in the 
mouth of the Yangtse river, having an area of 270 square 
miles, possessed, according to the official census of 1902, a 
density of 3,700 per square mile and yet there was hut one 
large city on the island, hence the population is largely 
rural. 

It could not be other than a matter of the highest indus- 
trial, educational and social importance to all nations if 
there might be brought to them a full and accurare account 
of all those conditions which have made it possible for such 
dense populations to be maintained so largely upon the 
products of Chinese, Korean and Japanese soils. ^lany of 
the steps, phases and practices through which this evolu- 
tion has passed are irrevocably buried in the past but such 
remarkable maintenance efficiency attained centuries ago 
and projected into the present Avith little apparent decad- 
ence merits the most profound study and the time is fully 
ripe when it should be made. Living as we are in the 
morning of a century of transition from isolated to cosmo- 
politan national life when profound readjustments, indus- 
trial, educational and social, must result, such an investi- 
gation cannot be made too soon. It is liigh time for each 
nation to study the others and by mutual agreement and 
co-operative effort, the results of such studies should lie- 
come available to all concerned, made so in the spirit that 
each should become coordinate and mutually helpful com- 
ponent factors in the world's progress. 



Need of Mutual Understanding. 5 

One very appropriate and immensely helpful means for 
attacking this problem, and which should prove mutually 
helpful to citizen and state, would be for the higher edu- 
cational institutions of all nations, instead of exchanging 
courtesies through their baseball teams, to send select 
bodies of their best students under competent leadership 
and by international agreement, both east and west, organ- 
izing therefrom investigating bodies each containing com- 
ponents of the eastern and western civilization and whose 
purpose it should be to study specifically set problems. 
Such a movement well conceived and directed, manned by 
the most capable young men, should create an international 
acquaintance and spread broadcast a body of important 
knowledge which would develop as the young men mature 
and contribute immensely toward world peace and world 
progress. If some broad plan of international effort such 
as is here suggested were organized the expense of mainte- 
nance might well be met by diverting so much as is need- 
ful from the large sums set aside for the expansion of 
navies, for such steps as these, taken in the interests of 
world uplift and world peace, could not fail to be more 
efficacious and less expensive than increase in fighting 
equipment. It would cultivate the spirit of pulling to- 
gether and of a square deal rather than one of holding 
aloof and of striving to gain unneighborly advantage. 

]\Iany factors and conditions conspire to give to the 
farms and farmers of the Far East their high maintenance 
efficiency and some of these may be succinctly stated. The 
portions of China, Korea and Japan where dense popula- 
tions have developed and are being maintained occupy ex- 
ceptionally favorable geographic positions so far as these 
influence agricultural production. Canton in the south of 
China has the latitude of Havana, Cuba, while I\Iukden in 
Manchuria, and northern Honshu in Japan are only as far 
north as New York city, Chicago and northern California. 
The United States lies mainly between 50 degrees and 30 
degrees of latitude while these three countries lie between 
40 degrees and 20 degrees, some seven hundred miles 



6 Introduction. 

further south. This difference of position, giving them 
longer seasons, has made it possible for them to devise 
systems of agriculture whereby they grow two, three and 
even four crops on the same piece of ground each year. 
In southern China, in Formosa and in parts of Japan two 
crops of rice are grown; in the Chekiang province there 
may be a crop of rape, of wheat or barley or of Windsor 
beans or clover which is followed in midsummer by another 
of cotton or of rice. In the Shantung province wheat or 
barley in the winter and spring may be followed in summer 
by large or small millet, sweet potatoes, soy beans or pea- 
nuts. At Tientsin, 39° north, in the latitude of Cincinnati, 
Indianapolis, and Springfield, Illinois, we talked with 
a farmer who followed his crop of wheat on his small 
holding with one of onions and the onions with cabbage, 
realizing from the three crops at the rate of $163, gold, per 
acre; and with another who planted Irish potatoes at the 
-earliest opportunity in the spring, marketing them when 
small, and following these with radishes, the radishes with 
'Cabbage, realizing from the three crops at the rate of $203 
per acre. 

Nearly 500,000,000 people are being maintained, chiefly 
upon the products of an area smaller than the improved 
farm lands of the United States. Complete a square on the 
lines drawn from Chicago southward to the Gulf and west- 
ward across Kansas, and there Avill be enclosed an area 
greater than the cultivated fields of China, Korea and 
Japan and from which five times our present population 
are fed. 

The rainfall in these countries is not only larger than 
that even in our Atlantic and Gulf states, but it falls more 
exclusively during the summer season when its efficiency 
in crop production may l)e highest. South China has a 
rainfall of some 80 inches with little of it during the win- 
ter, while in our southern states the rainfall is nearer 60 
inches with less than one-half of it between June and Sep- 
tember. Along a line drawn from Lake Superior through 
•central Texas the yearly precipitation is about 30 inches 



Rainfall and Crops 7 

but only 16 inches of this falls during the months May to 
{September; while in the Shantung province, China, with 
an annual rainfall of little more than 24 inches, 17 of these 
fall during the months designated and most of this in July 
and August. When it is stated that under the best tillage 
and with no loss of water through percolation, most of our 
agricultural crops require 300 to 600 tons of water for each 
ton of dr}^ substance brought to maturity, it can be readily 
understood that the right amount of available moisture, 
coming at the proper time, must be one of the prime factors 
of a high maintenance capacity for any soil, and hence that 
in the Far East, with their intensive methods, it is possible 
to make their soils yield large returns. 

The selection of rice and of the millets as the great 
staple food crops of these three nations, and the systems of 
agriculture they have evolved to realize the most from 
them, are to us remarkable and indicate a grasp of es- 
sentials and principles which may well cause western na- 
tions to pause and reflect. 

Notwithstanding the large and favorable rainfall of 
these countries, each of the nations have selected the one 
crop which permits them to utilize not only practically 
the entire amount of rain which falls upon their fields, but 
in addition enormous volumes of the run-off from adjacent 
uncultivable mountain country. Wherever paddy fields 
are practicable there rice is grown. In the three main 
islands of Japan 56 per cent of the cultivated fields, 11,000 
square miles, is laid out for rice growing and is maintained 
under water from transplanting to near harvest time, after 
which the land is allowed to dry, to be devoted to dry land 
crops during the balance of the year, where the season 
permits. 

To anyone who studies the agricultural methods of the 
Far East in the field it is evident that these people, cen- 
turies ago, came to appreciate the value of water in crop 
production as no other nations have. They have adapted 
conditions to crops and crops to conditions until with rice 
they have a cereal which permits the most intense fertili- 



8 Introduction. 

zation and at the same time the ensuring of maximum 
yields against both drought and flood. With the practice 
of western nations in all humid climates, no matter how 
completely and highly we fertilize, in more years than not 
yields are reduced by a deficiency or an excess of water. 

It is difficult to convey, by word or map, an adequate 
conception of the magnitude of the systems of canalization 
which contribute primarily to rice culture. A conserva- 
tive estimate would place the miles of canals in China at 
fully 200,000 and there are probably more miles of canal in 
China, Korea and Japan than there are miles of railroad in 
the United States. China alone has as many acres in rice 
each year as the United States has in wheat and her an- 
nual product is more than double and probably threefold 
our annual wheat crop, and yet the whole of the rice area 
produces at least one and sometimes two other crops each 
year. 

The selection of the quick-maturing, drought-resisting 
millets as the great staple food crops to be grown wherever 
water is not available for irrigation, and the almost uni- 
versal planting in hills or drills, permitting intertillage, 
thus adopting centuries ago the utilization of earth mulches 
in conserving soil moisture, has enabled these people to se- 
cure maximum returns in seasons of drought and where 
the rainfall is small. The millets thrive in the hot sum- 
mer climates ; they survive when the available soil moisture 
is reduced to a low limit, and they grow vigorously when 
the heavy rains come. Thus we find in the Far East, with 
more rainfall and a better distribution of it than occurs 
in the United States, and with warmer, longer seasons, that 
these people have with rare wisdom combined both irriga- 
tion and dry farming methods to an extent and with an 
intensity far beyond anything our people have ever 
dreamed, in order that they might maintain their dense 
populations. 

Notwithstanding the fact that in each of these coun- 
tries the soils are naturally more than ordinarily deep, in- 
herently fertile and enduring, judicious and rational meth- 



Fertilization. 9 

ods of fertilization are everywhere practiced ; but not until 
recent years, and only in Japan, have mineral commercial 
fertilizers been used. For centuries, however, all cultiva- 
ted lands, including adjacent hill and mountain sides, 
the canals, streams and the sea have been made to con- 
tribute what they could toward the fertilization of cul- 
tivated fields and these contributions in the aggregate have 
been large. In China, in Korea and in Japan all but the 
inaccessible portions of their vast extent of mountain and 
hill lands have long been taxed to their full capacity for 
fuel, lumber and herbage for green manure and compost 
material; and the ash of practically all of the fuel and of 
all of the lumber used at home finds its way ultimately to 
the fields as fertilizer. 

In China enormous quantities of canal mud are applied 
to the fields, sometimes at the rate of even 70 and more 
tons per acre. So, too, where there are no canals, both 
soil and subsoil are carried into the villages and there be- 
tween the intervals when needed they are, at the expense 
of great labor, composted with organic refuse and often 
afterwards dried and pulverized before being carried back 
and used on the fields as home-made fertilizers. Manure of 
all kinds, human and animal, is religiously saved and ap- 
plied to the fields in a manner which secures an efficiency 
far above our own practices. Statistics obtained through 
the Bureau of Agriculture, Japan, place the amount of 
human waste in that country in 1908 at 23,950,295 tons, 
or 1.75 tons per acre of her cultivated land. The Inter- 
national Concession of the city of Shanghai, in 1908, sold 
to a Chinese contractor the privilege of entering residences 
and public places early in the morning of each day in the 
year and removing the night soil, receiving therefor more 
than $31,000, gold, for 78,000 tons of waste. All of this 
we not only throw away but expend much larger sums in 
doing so. 

Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly 
prepared and applied to the land annually, amounts to 
more than 4.5 tons per acre of cultivated field exclusive of 



10 Introduction. 

the commercial fertilizers purchased. Between Shanhai- 
kwan and IMukden in IManchuria we passed, on June 18th, 
thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost soil 
recently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where 
it was waiting to be " fed to the crops. ' ' 

It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war 
of more than thirty years, generaled by the best scientists 
of all Europe, that it was finally conceded as demonstrated 
that leguminous plants acting as hosts for lower organisms 
living on their roots are largely responsible for the mainte- 
nance of soil nitrogen, drawing it directly from the air to 
which it is returned through the processes of decay. But 
centuries of practice had taught the Far East farmers that 
the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring 
fertility, and sO' in each of the three countries the growing 
of legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively 
for the express purpose of fertilizing the soil is one of their 
old, fixed practices. 

Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is har- 
vested, fields are often sowed to ''clover" (Astragalus 
sinicus) which is allowed to grow until near the next trans- 
planting time when it is either turned under directly, or 
more often stacked along the canals and saturated while 
doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the 
canal. After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is ap- 
plied to the field. And so it is literally true that these old 
world farmers whom we regard as ignorant, perhaps be- 
cause they do not ride sulky plows as we do, have long in- 
cluded legumes in their crop rotation, regarding them as 
indispensable. 

Time is a function of every life process as it is of every 
physical, chemical and mental reaction. The husbandman 
is an industrial biologist and as such is compelled to shape 
his operations so as to conform with the time requirements 
of his crops. The oriental farmer is a time economizer be- 
yond all others. He utilizes the first and last minute and 
all that are between. The foreigner accuses the Chinaman 
of being always long on time, never in a fret, never in a 



Methods of Culture. ■ 11 

■hurry. This is quite true and made possible for the rea- 
son that they are a people who definitely set their faces 
toward the future and lead time by the forelock. They 
have long realized that much time is required to transform 
organic matter into forms available for plant food and al- 
though they are the heaviest users in the world, the largest 
portion of this organic matter is predigested with soil or 
subsoil before it is applied to their fields, and at an enor- 
mous cost of human time and labor, but it practically 
lengthens their growing season and enables them to adopt 
a system of multiple cropping which would not otherwise 
be possible. By planting in hills and rows with intertillage 
it is very common to see three crops growing upon the 
same field at one time, but in different stages of maturity, 
one nearly ready to harvest; one just coming up, and the 
other at the stage when it is drawing most heavily upon the 
soil. By such practice, with heavy fertilization, and by 
supplemental irrigation when needful, the soil is made to 
do full duty throughout the growing season. 

Then, notwithstanding the enormous acreage of rice 
planted each year in these countries, it in all set in hills and 
every spear is transplanted. Doing this, they save in 
many ways except in the matter of human labor, which is 
the one thing they have in excess. By thoroughly prepar- 
ing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving the most 
careful attention, they are able to grow on one acre, during 
30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in 
the mean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, 
being harvested and the fields being fitted to receive the 
rice when it is ready for transplanting, and in effect this 
interval of time is added to their growing season. 

Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the 
most remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for 
its magnitude ; for having had its birthplace apparently 
in oldest China at least 2700 years B. C. ; for having been 
laid on the domestication of a wild insect of the woods; 
and for having lived throus^h more than 4000 years, ex- 
panding until a million-dollar cargo of the product has 



12 Iniroduciion. 

been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special 
fast express to the east for the Christmas trade. 

A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would 
be 120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the output 
of Japan, Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, 
would probably exceed 150,000,000 pounds annually, rep- 
resenting a total value of perhaps $700,000,000, quite equal- 
ling in value the wheat crop of the United States, but pro- 
duced on less than one-eighth the area of our wheat fields. 

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of 
the great industries of these nations, taking rank with that 
of sericulture if not above it in the important part it plays 
in the welfare of the people. There is little reason to doubt 
that this industry has its foundation in the need of some- 
thing to render boiled water palatable for drinking pur- 
poses. The drinking of boiled water is universally adopted 
in these countries as an individually available and thor- 
oughly efficient safeguard against that class of deadly 
disease germs which thus far it has been impossible to ex- 
clude from the drinking water of any densely peopled 
country. 

Judged by the success of the most thorough sanitary 
measures thus far instituted, and taking into considera- 
tion the inherent difficulties which must increase enor- 
mously with increasing populations, it appears inevitable 
that modern methods must ultimately fail in sanitary effi- 
ciency and that absolute safety can be secured only in 
some manner having the equivalent effect of boiling drink- 
ing water, long ago adopted by the Mongolian races. 

In the year 1907 Japan had 124,482 acres of land in tea 
plantations, producing 60,877,975 pounds of cured tea. 
In China the volume annually produced is much larger 
than that of Japan, 40,000,000 pounds going annually to 
Tibet alone from the Szechwan province ; and the direct 
export to foreign countries was, in 1905, 176,027,255 
pounds, and in 1906 it was 180,271,000, so that their an- 
nual export must exceed 200,000,000 pounds with a total 
annual output more than double this amount of cured tea. 



Economy and Industry. 13 

But above any other factor, and perhaps greater than 
all of them combined in contributing to the high mainte- 
nance efficiency attained in these countries must be placed 
the standard of living to which the industrial classes have 
been compelled to adjust themselves, combined with their 
remarkable industry and with the most intense economy 
they practice along every line of effort and of living. 

Almost every foot of land is made to contribute material 
for food, fuel or fabric. Everything which can be made 
•edible serves as food for man or domestic animals. What- 
ever cannot be eaten or worn is used for fuel. The wastes 
of the body, of fuel and of fabric worn beyond other use 
are taken back to the field ; before doing so they are housed 
against waste from weather, compounded with intelligence 
and forethought and patiently labored with through one, 
three or even six months, to bring them into the most effi- 
cient form to serve as manure for the soil or as feed for 
the crop. It seems to be a golden rule with these indus- 
trial classes, or if not golden, then an inviolable one, that 
whenever an extra hour or day of labor can promise even 
a little larger return then that shall be given, and neither 
a rainy day nor the hottest sunshine shall be permitted to 
cancel the obligation or defer its execution. 



I. 

FIRST GLIMPSES OF JAPAN. 



We left the United States from Seattle for Shanghai, 
China, sailing by the northern route, at one P. M. Febru- 
ary second, reaching Yokohama February 19th and Shang- 
hai, March 1st. It was our aim throughout the journey 
to keep in close contact with the field and crop problems 
and to converse personally, through interpreters or other- 
wise, with the farmers, gardeners and fruit growers them- 
selves; and we have taken pains in many cases to visit the 
same fields or the same region two, three or more times at 
different intervals during the season in order to observe 
different phases of the same cultural or fertilization meth- 
ods as these changed or varied with the season. 

Our first near view of Japan came in the early morning 
of February 19th when passing some three miles off the 
point where the Pacific passenger steamer Dakota was 
beached and wrecked in broad daylight without loss of life 
two years ago. The high rounded hills were clothed 
neither in the dense dark forest green of Washington and 
Vancouver, left sixteen days before, nor yet in the bril- 
liant emerald such as Ireland's hills in June fling in un- 
paralleled greeting to passengers surfeited with the dull 
grey of the rolling ocean. This lack of strong forest 
growth and even of shrubs and heavy herbage on hills cov- 
ered with deep soil, neither cultivated nor suffering from 
serious erosion, yet surrounded by favorable climatic con- 
ditions, was our first great surprise. 



Landing in Japan. 15 

To the southward around the point, after turning north- 
ward into the deep bay, similar conditions prevailed, and 
at ten o'clock we stood off Uraga where Commodore Perry 
anchored on July 8th, 1853, bearing to the Shogun Presi- 
dent Fillmore's letter which opened the doors of Japan to 
the commerce of the world and, it is to be hoped brought 
to her people, with their habits of frugality and industry 
so indelibly fixed by centuries of inheritance, better oppor- 
tunities for development along those higher lines destined 
to make life still more worth living. 

As the Tosa Maru drew alongside the pier at Yokohama 
it was raining hard and this had attired an army after the 
manner of Robinson Crusoe, dressed as seen in Fig. 1, 
read}^ to carry you and yours to the Customs house and 
beyond for one, two, three or five cents. Strong was the 
contrast when the journey was reversed and we descended 
the gang plank at Seattle, where no one sought the oppor- 
tunity of moving baggage. 

Through the kindness of Captain Harrison of the Tosa 
Maru in calling an interpreter by wireless to meet the 
steamer, it was possible to utilize the entire interval of 
stop in Yokohama to the best advantage in the fields and 
gardens spread over the eighteen miles of plain extending 
to Tokyo, traversed by both electric tram and railway 
lines, each running many trains making frequent stops; 
so that this wonderfully fertile and highly tilled district 
could be readily and easily reached at almost any point. 

We had left home in a memorable storm of snow, sleet 
and rain Avhich cut out of service telegraph and telephone 
lines over a large part of the United States ; we had sighted 
the Aleutian Islands, seeing and feeling nothing on the 
WRj which could suggest a warm soil and green fields, hence 
our surprise was great to find the jinricksha men w^ith bare 
feet and legs naked to the thighs, and greater still when 
we found, before we were outside the city limits, that the 
electric tram was running between fields and gardens 
green with wheat, barley, onions, carrots, cabbage and 
other vegetables. We were rushing through the Orient 



16 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




Rain I) -day Shoes. .17 

^vith everything outside the car so strange and different 
from home that the shock came like a bolt of lightning out 
of a clear sky. 

In the car every man except myself and one other 
was smoking tobacco and that other was inhaling camphor 
through an ivory mouthpiece resembling a cigar holder 
closed at the end. Several women, tiring of sitting foreign 
style, slipped off — I cannot say out of — their shoes and 
sat facing the windows, with toes crossed behind them on 
the seat. The streets were muddy from the rain and every- 
body Japanese was on rainy-day wooden shoes, the soles 
carried three to four inches above the ground by two cross 
blocks, in the manner seen in Fig. 2. A mother, with baby 
on her back and a daughter of sixteen years came into the 
car. Notwithstanding her high shoes the mother had dip- 
ped one toe into the mud. Seated, she slipped her foot 
off. AYithout evident instructions the pretty black-eyed, 
glossy-haired, red-lipped lass, with cheeks made rosy, 
picked up the shoe, withdrew a piece of white tissue paper 
from the great pocket in her sleeve, deftly cleaned the 
otherwise spotless white cloth sock and then the shoe, threw 
the paper on the floor, looked to see that her fingers were 
not soiled, then set the shoe at her mother's foot, which 
found its place without effort or glance. 

Everything here was strange and the scenes shifted with 
the speed of the wildest dream. Now it was driving piles 
for the foundation of a bridge. A tripod of poles was 
erected above the pile and from it hung a pulley. Over 
the pulley passed a rope from the driving weight and from 
its end at the pulley ten cords extended to the ground. In 
a circle at the foot of the tripod stood ten agile Japanese 
women. They were the hoisting engine. They chanted in 
perfect rhythm, hauled and stepped, dropped the weight 
and hoisted again, making up for heavier hammer and 
higher drop by more blows per minute. When we reached 
Shanghai we saw the pile driver being worked from above. 
Fourteen Chinese men stood upon a raised staging, each 
with a separate cord passing direct from the hand to the 
2 



18 



First Glimpses of Japan. 



weight below. A concerted, half-musical chant, modulated 
to relieve monotony, kept all hands together. What did 
the operation of this machine cost? Thirteen cents, gold, 




Fig, 2. — Girl on i';iiii,\ -day wooden shoes, cai-rying and entertaining- child 
in the way must common in .Japan. 



per man per day, which covered fuel and lubricant, both 
automatically served. Two additional men managed the 
piles, two directed the hammer, eighteen manned the out- 
fit. Tw^o dollars and thirty-four cents per day covered 
fuel, superintendence and repairs. There was almost no 



Night Soil. 19 

capital invested in machinery. Men were plenty and to 
spare. Rice was the fuel, cooked without salt, boiled stiff, 
reenforced with a bit of pork or fish, appetized with salted 
cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or three of forty and 
more other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong 
and happy? They certainly were strong. They are 
steadily increasing their millions, and as one stood and 
watched them at their work their faces v^ere often wreathed 
in smiles and wore what seemed a look of satisfaction and 
contentment. 

Among the most common sights on our rides from Yoko- 
hama to Tokyo, both within the city and along the roads 
leading to the fields, starting early in the morning, were 
the loads of night soil carried on the shoulders of men and 
on the backs of animals, but most commonly on strong 
carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly covered 
wooden containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds 
each. Strange as it may seem, there are not today and ap- 
parently never have been, even in the largest and oldest 
cities of Japan, China or Korea, anything corresponding 
to the hydraulic systems of sewage disposal used now by 
western nations. Provision is made for the removal of 
storm waters but when I asked my interpreter if it was 
not the custom of the city during the winter months to 
discharge its night soil into the sea, as a quicker and 
cheaper mode of disposal, his reply came quick and sharp, 
"No, that would be waste. We throw nothing away. It 
is worth too much money.'' In such public places as rail- 
way stations provision is made for saving, not for wasting, 
and even along the country roads screens invite the trav- 
eler to stop, primarily for profit to the owner, more than 
for personal convenience. 

Between Yokohama and Tokyo, along the electric car line 
and not far distant from the seashore, there were to be seen 
in February very many long, fence-high screens extending 
east and west, strongly inclined to the north, and built out 
of rice straw, closely tied together and supported on bamboo 
poles carried upon posts of wood set in the groimd. These 



20 



First Glimpses of Japan. 









Fig. 3.— Method of drying seaAveed u.sed for food. The small black squares 

on the larger light ones are the seaweed. The skewers seen pin the squares 

of matting against the long screens, six of which are shown in parallel 

series. 




Fig. 4. — Section of shallow sea bottom planted to brushwood on which the 
edible seaweeds attach themselves and grow. 



Driji)ig Seaweed. 21 

screens, set in parallel series of five to ten or more in nnm- 
ber and several hundred feet long, were used for the pur- 
pcse of drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being 
spread out in the manner shown in Fig. 3. 

The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve 
inch straw mats, forming a thin layer seven by eight inches. 
These mats are held by means of wooden skewers forced 
through the body of the screen, exposing the seaweed to 
the direct sunshine. After becoming dry the rectangles of 
seaweed are piled in bundles an incli thick, cut once in 
two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are 
neatly tied and thus exposed for sale as soup stock and 
for other purposes. 

To obtain this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and 
the limbs of trees are set up in the bottom of shallow water, 
as seen in Fig. 4. To these limbs the seaweeds liecome at- 
tached, grow to maturity and are then gathered by hand. 
By this method of culture large amounts of important 
food stuff are grown for the support of the people on areas 
otherwise wholly unproductive. 

Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken 
in February, is the method of training pear orchards in 
Japan, with their limits tied down upon horizontal over- 
head trellises at a hight under which a man can readily 
walk erect and easily reach the fruit with the hand while 
standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form ar- 
bors of greater or less size, the trees being set in quincunx 
order about twelve feet apart in and between the rows. 
Bamboo poles are used overhead and these carried on 
posts of the same material 1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, to 
which they are tied. Such a pear orchard is shown in 
Fig. 5. 

The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one 
plane, tying them down and pruning out those not de- 
sired. As a result the ground beneath is completely shaded 
and every pear is within reach, which is a great con- 
venience when it becomes desirable to protect the fruit 



22 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




P'ig. 5. — Looking down upon an extensive pear orchard whose limbs are 
trained horizontally, forming an arbor completely shading the ground 
when in leaf, and placing all of the fruit within reach of the hand from 
beneath. 




Fig. 6.— Pear trees at Akashi Experiment Station, Japan. Pears protected 
by paper bags. Special form of pruning advised by Prof. Ono, standing 
on the left, with Prof. Tokito. The trees branch below rather than at the 
level of the trellis. 



Pear Orchards. 



23 



from insects, by tying paper bags over every pear as seen 
in Figs. 6 and 7. The orchard ground is kept free from 
weeds and not infrequently is covered with a layer of 
rice or other straw, extensively used in Japan as a ground 
cover with various crops and when so used is carefully 
laid in handfuls from bundles, the straws being kept par- 
allel as when harvested. 




F'n 



-Low branching pear orchard with pears protected by paper bags, 
Akashi Experiment Station, Japan. 



To one from a country of 160-acre farms, with roads 
four rods wide ; of cities with broad streets and residences 
with green lawns and ample back yards; and where the 
cemeteries are large and beautiful parks, the first days of 
travel in these old countries force the over-crowding upon 
the attention as nothing else can. One feels that the cities 
are greatly over-crowded with houses and shops, and these 
with people and wares; that the country is over-crowded 
with fields and the fields with crops; and that in Japan 
the over-crowding is greatest of all in the cemeteries. 



24 



First Glimpses of Japan, 










A Croivded Land. 



25 



gravestones almost touching and markers for families liter- 
ally in bundles at a grave, while round about there may 
be no free country whatever, dwellings, gardens or rice 
paddies contesting the tiny allotted areas too closely to 
leave even foot-paths between. 

Unless recently modified through foreign influence the 
streets of villages and cities are narrow, as seen in Fig. 8, 
where however the street is unusually broad. This is a 
village in the Hakone district on a beautiful lake of the 
same name, where stands an Imperial summer palace, seen 
near the center of the view on a hill across the lake. The 
roofs of the houses here are typical of the neat, careful 
thatching with rice straw, very generally adopted in place 
of tile for the country villages throughout much of Japan. 
The shops and stores, open full width directly upon the 
street, are filled to overflowing, as seen in Fig. 9 and in 
Fi^. 22. 




Fig. 9. — Small store full to overflowing; entire front opening flush with the 

street. 



26 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




Crowding of Kural Sections. 27 

In the canalized regions of China the country villages 
crowd both banks of a canal, as is the case in Fig. 10. 
Here, too, often is a single street and it very narrow, very 
crowded and very busy. Stone steps lead from the houses 
down into the water where clothing, vegetables, rice and 
what not are conveniently washed. In this particular 
village two rows of houses stand on one side of the canal 
separated by a very narrow street, and a single row on the 
other. Between the bridge where the camera was exposed 
and one barely discernible in the background, crossing the 
canal a third of a mile distant, we counted upon one side, 
walking along the narrow street, eighty houses each with 
its family, usually of three generations and often of four. 
Thus in the narrow strip, 154 feet broad, including 16 feet 
of street and 30 feet of canal, with its three lines of houses, 
lived no less than 240 families and more tlian 1200 and 
probably nearer 2000 people. 

When we turn to the crowding of fields in the country 
nothing except seeing can tell so forcibly the fact as such 
landscapes as those of Figs. 11, 12 and 13, one in Japan, 
one in Korea and one in China, not far from Nanking, look- 
ing from the hills across the fields to the broad Yangtse 
kiang, barely discernible as a band of light along the 
horizon. 

The average area of the rice field in Japan is less than 
five square rods and that of her upland fields only about 
twenty. In the case of the rice fields the small size is 
necessitated partly by the requirement of holding water on 
the sloping sides of the valley, as seen in Fig. 11. These 
small areas do not represent the amount of land worked 
by one family, the average for Japan being more nearly 
2.5 acres. But the lands worked by one family are seldom 
contiguous, they may even be widely scattered and ver^^ 
often rented. 

The people generally live in villages, going often consid- 
erable distances to their work. Recognizing the great disad- 
vantage of scattered holdings broken into such small areas, 
the Japanese Government has passed laws for the adjust- 



28 



First Glimpses of Japan. 




Korean Rice Fields. 



29 







A- .:/■•: Ill, 











d O S 
^ o ^ 






o ^ — 






30 



First Glimpses of Japan. 

LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



